1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of interactive voice response systems and, more particularly, to processing user inputs and information determined by interactive voice response systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
To function effectively, speech recognition-based interactive voice response (IVR) systems must be able to distinguish between ambiguous search results and/or multiple menu selections from a user. For example, as a caller or user traverses through an IVR menu hierarchy, the caller is presented with one or more possible menu selections. If the caller is presented with more than one possible menu selection, the IVR system must disambiguate the user specified menu selection from the other possible menu selections. This process can involve speech recognizing user utterances and/or processing dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals received over a telephony link. Accordingly, in order to distinguish the user selected IVR menu selection from the other possible selections, the IVR system must rely upon significant speech and/or signal processing resources to comprehend the user input.
Several solutions have been proposed for performing disambiguation. One such solution is directed to prompting the caller for additional information which may be used to distinguish one data item from another. For instance, if the caller is asked to select among multiple search results which are presented as possible menu selections, the additional information supplied by the caller can be used to distinguish among those menu selections.
This technique, however, suffers from several disadvantages. In particular, this technique places the burden of distinguishing between results upon the caller, who may or may not be in possession of the necessary information. Additionally, the IVR system utilizes additional processing resources when conducting further dialogs with the caller to elicit this information and process the caller inputs. Also, this technique is limited to distinguishing among query results such as data items within a data processing system that is either included within or communicatively linked to the IVR system. The caller is not aided in navigating the IVR menu hierarchy and the amount of resources required to process received caller inputs is not reduced.
Another proposed solution for performing disambiguation has been to store statistical information detailing which search results are selected most often as preferred choices by all users who access the IVR system. When multiple search results are returned as possible menu selections in response to a user query, the result which is selected most often by all users having accessed the IVR system can be presented as a preferred menu selection.
This technique also suffers from several disadvantages. In particular, this technique is directed to the entire population of callers who access the IVR system and cannot function on a per caller basis. Further, like the disambiguation technique previously discussed, this technique is limited to disambiguating among similar data items and does not aid the caller in navigating the IVR menu hierarchy.
Yet another proposed solution has been to allow a caller to navigate to a desired location within the IVR menu hierarchy and issue a command to store that location as a shortcut. The next time the same caller accesses the IVR system, the, IVR system can present the shortcut as a menu option thereby allowing the user to circumvent one or more menu selections within the IVR menu hierarchy to arrive at the destination more quickly. This technique, like the others, places the burden upon the caller to essentially bookmark a location within the IVR menu hierarchy in a manual fashion.